Gastric feeding tubes, also known as enteral feeding tubes or enteric feeding tubes, are typically used to introduce nutritional substances or other prescribed products directly into the gut of a patient. The products are typically in a “soupy” form of liquid and solid or liquid only. The tubes have a distal end positioned in the patient's stomach or intestine, from which the nutritional substance is released. The distal (inside) end of the tube is held in place by a water filled balloon or the like.
The proximal (outer) end of the gastric feeding tube is typically connected to an enteral administration set which in turn is connected to a container having a prescribed product therein. The nutritional product may be delivered by gravity feed or more commonly by means of a pump. In either arrangement there is some pressure in the feeding tube and the connections that are necessary to join the container of nutritional product to the outside end of the gastric feeding tube. One of the problems associated with enteral feeding is the unintentional disconnection of the feeding supply tube from the connector on the outer end of the gastric feeding tube.
It is common for enteric feeding to take place overnight, while the patient is in bed. Patients, particularly children, are prone to moving during sleep in ways that can result in inadvertent disconnection of the feeding supply tube, which results in an alarm and significant disruption of patient rest. Further, it is common for the connector to include a Y-port for delivery of medication via the gastric feeding tube. Such a Y-port connector is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,322,073. The medication port has a plug to close the port when not in use, e.g., during feeding. Patient movement may kink the portion of the gastric tube between the Y-port connector and the patient's abdomen, which can cause pressure to accumulate and push the plug out of the medication port. This can result in nutritional product flowing out of the medication port until the issue is discovered.
Feeding pumps are equipped to sound an alarm when: 1) the feeding bag is not properly placed inside the door of the pump; 2) there is air in the line of the feeding bag; or 3) there is a kink in any of the tubes resulting in a “no flow” error message. However, the pump does not alarm if the feeding bag is disconnected from the feeding tube of the patient. For example, if the feeding tube is disconnected during a continuous night feed of 10 hours, which does not cause the pump to alarm, the result can be anywhere from 1-10 hours of the nutritional product released into the patient's bed. Not only is this a mess, but the patient is not receiving the prescribed nutrition.
Many conditions require a patient to need a feeding tube. Whether the patient is not allowed to eat by mouth at all or the patient needs supplemental calories in addition to what they eat by mouth, the fact remains that getting the calories successfully into the patient is vital for them to remain healthy. Losing these very important calories due to one of the aforementioned mishaps can cause major issues for these patients.
It is an object of the disclosure to provide a cost effective, simple product that will reduce problems associated with disconnection of feeding supply tubes and/or unintended opening of medication ports in enteric feeding apparatus.